Ruminations on law and life

Death on a golf course.

A week ago this past Wednesday, an 83 year old man at a local golf course picked up a gun and killed himself. His suicide was briefly noted by our local paper but the news item was short on specifics, not even his name.

Many years ago, poet John Donne wrote, “Any man’s death diminishes me because I am involved in mankind.” I remember Donne’s Meditations from college. I always believed Donne made a good point.

I didn’t know this stranger who’d chosen such a peculiar place for the dolorous denouement of his life. Nonetheless his death diminishes me. I dwell on it since.

Because I play that golf course often, I knew I’d think of him the next time I was there. Why did he do it? How could he do it? Where on the course did it happen? Those questions and others ran through my mind this week.

I finally asked a course employee about the death. She told me how saddened she was. She said she knew him because he was a golf course regular, with a home on the course. It turns out, he’d been suffering from pancreatic cancer.

Statistically, 95% of those diagnosed with this malignancy are dead within 5 years. It’s a grim and painful disease. It depresses and devastates its victims.

Why had he chosen the golf course to end his life? I don’t believe it was to make a statement. A part of me wants to think he’d created a lot of good memories on that course.

But beyond the shock of the groundskeeper who found him is the impact a violent death like this has to have on family and friends. I ponder the means and the reasons. I can only imagine what when through his mind.

Was it to end a painful present and more dreadful future? Was it to exercise control over an uncontrollable turn of fate? Was it simply his means for decided-on certitude to a life otherwise well-spent? Or was it because he finally ran out of palliative options?

In 1997, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled there is no Constitutionally-protected right to physician-assisted suicide. As a result, state bans on assisted suicide are deemed constitutionally valid.

So while state bans are enforceable, 2 states took the opposite tact. Instead of a ban, Oregon and Washington made physician-aid-in-dying legally available. Terminally-ill patients can lawfully direct the timing and circumstances of an impending death. A physician can legally prescribe a lethal drug overdose to a terminally-ill patient of sound mind who requests it orally and in writing.

The moral, ethical and religious issues underlying the issue persist. Yet most of us don’t dwell very much on such end-of-life concerns. They only become considerations when death, imminent or completed, intrudes our daily living.

At such moments, especially when a friend or family-member is involved, empathy and compassion compel our consideration. Does a mentally-competent person with a life-ending condition have a right to a dignified death free from pain? And in those circumstances, when it’s a loved one, “What does a terminally-ill person do with a severely-impaired quality of life?”

And finally, what happens if we are that terminally-ill person? What are our options for a peaceful, dignified end to suffering?

Therefore, in weighing this most personal of all decisions, we may realize how truly limited our options sometimes are. Realizing this may be why one person sadly concluded his only way out was on his terms alone on a quiet golf course.